Steve Wozniak used to tip from printed sheets of $2 bills
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> As I opened my wallet, I considered whether I should risk using this fake ID on the Secret Service. It probably amounted to a real crime. I had my driver's license as well. But you only live once and only a few of us even get a chance like this once in our lives. So I handed him the fake ID. He noted and returned it. The Secret Service took an ID that said "Laser Safety Officer" with a photo of myself wearing an eyepatch.
Woz plays life like an RPG.
I find his nonchalant delivery quite jarring. I don't understand what's going through his head here.
Now you need either a passport or a special Michigan drivers license. Last time I renewed in person after COVID I tried to get one. The lady behind the counter said you don't want one of those. I asked her why and she told me that I'd hold up the line behind me. Since I was renewing months after my license expired due to the office being closed at the beginning of COVID I didn't argue with her.
You can still cross EU borders with just a driving licence, or government issued ID where they have them.
(In practice the vast majority using planes and boats at least probably do take a passport, I always did from the UK, but in theory you don't need one, so if you weren't planning to go elsewhere you wouldn't even need to get a passport.)
For anybody unfamiliar with Europe, I just want to add that there aren't any checkpoints or border crossings, you just drive through or walk over. Half the time you won't even notice you're doing it. You're just supposed to have your ID on your person when you do.
Ireland (and previously the UK) is the only major exception to this, as it's part of the common travel area alongside the UK. In practice, this doesn't make a huge difference when you're an Irish or EU citizen (it does if you're a tourist who needs a different visa to visit), as it's an island, and airlines require a form of ID to board anyway. When travelling from Ireland to Schengen, I usually have a passport in my carry on luggage as a backup, and take my passport-card (similar to a national ID card) in my wallet.
i.e. that there should be no need to also carry your passport, unless intending to travel on outwith the EU?
However, when I'm traveling to somewhere that has a hotel safe, or somewhere secure enough to leave valuables, I'll bring the full passport booklet in my carry-on along with me, and leave it there when I go out. That way, in the unlikely event I should lose my wallet / passport card, I still have the full booklet to travel home on, rather than having to arrange emergency travel documents for the flight back.
I haven't needed it yet, but I don't see the harm in also taking it. It's not as if it takes up an obscene amount of space in my carry-on luggage, nor am I risking losing it by carrying it on my person at all times. It's purely there for peace of mind, and a backup in the very unlikely event I need it.
The above is only true in the Schengen zone. As soon as you cross the border to a non-Schengen country or you arrive from a non-Schengen country you will go through normal border control (with some exceptions). This includes multiple EU countries beside Ireland like Romania, Bulgaria or Cyprus. And many non-EU countries like Bosnia, Serbia, Monaco, Kosovo, Andorra, Ukraine, Turkey, Russia, etc.
(I'm exaggerating, but only slightly.. the irony is that I used to have data roaming included in Switzerland, but the network forced me to a new plan that doesn't have that because the old one was almost but not quite complying with EU roaming rules)
Nothing in EU is as simple, therefore it's not only a Schengen/non-Schengen thing. For example a border between North and "regular" Ireland isn't marked in any way, you just cross a brook or a field.
Or walk to the other side of the room. The border cuts through a number of houses and businesses as far as I'm aware.
Lost in translation I think. You could cross the border to Canada with just your state issued ID/drivers license as well back then.
What OP is saying is that it was even more lax than that. OP brought a piece of paper that is trivially forged, no photo on it, that basically just said in writing who they were with no additional ID needed.
> Lost in translation I think.
Yeah, perhaps. My surprise I suppose is because to me a birth certificate is something somewhat safely tucked away somewhere, extremely rarely required; frankly I don't know how much of a problem it would be to lose and try to replace (maybe not replacing it but fraud would be your greater concern?) but certainly not something generally carried around with you here. (At least, I'd be surprised to learn that's just me?)
I get what you’re getting at, but in Canada birth certificates from the 80s had a wallet sized version that had no more information than a drivers license, but it didn’t even have a photo on it. It was just a little pice of paper. I remember that’s very different from modern birth certificates.
I also crossed into the U.S. with my health card that only had my name on it and a number that is meaningless to the US boarder agency, also no photo.
Within Schengen you can get away with just a drivers license since there are no checks, but that doesn’t make it allowed.
Growing up in Detroit in the 80s (which some people don't realize is right on the border with Canada -- and that you travel south across a bridge to get to Canada! look it up) -- we generally didn't even bring our birth certificate. which may be a testament to our social class -- they could ask for a birth certificate if they thought you seemed "suspicious" (which i'm sure is racially coded), but for 90%+ of crossings, and 100% of our crossings, it was a two question interview without showing any paperwork at all. "What is your citizenship? What is your purpose of travel? OK, go through." No showing of ID at all -- not even a driver's license!
[And again, they could ask for ID -- a driver's license or birth certificate -- if they wanted. I am positive at least 9 out of 10 crossings they did not. I am indeed sure that the race and class appearance (and accent) of the crosser was significant].
We used to patriotically brag (in the time of the cold war and berlin wall) that this was how borders between two stable "free" countries, the US and Canada, could be, "the longest open border in the world".
It makes me really sad to think about how much we have gotten used to living in a security state, that does not need to be that way.
I mean, picture of a baby isn't exactly useful...
I wonder what would have happened?
I had a 22 caliber rifle when I was a tween. That wasn't uncommon because I lived in the country, and you pretty much needed such things to scare coyotes and wolves off the yard without hurting them. Obviously it can kill them, but you don't actually shoot them - you shoot close enough they understand the sound from your gun, and the sound on the ground right in front of them. Pretty effective.
It got jammed once, so I walked into town with it cocked open over my shoulder to get it fixed. They can't be fired when cocked open.
Nobody batted an eye. Not that people did that all the time, but everyone knew everyone, and easily figured the story would turn out more simple and mundane than the optics.
It was the early 80's and there was a lot less angst. And it was just a simple local hardware store that fixed it for me. By the 90's, that would never fly, and no hardware store would fix a kid's gun (or anyone's for that matter) in that very same town. By then you needed a Firearms Acquisition Cert, which no tween could possibly get.
I used to buy cigarettes for my mom, too. That was also legal back then.
The 80's was a sort of cross over period that way.
Do you have to show photo ID when filling up with gas within 100 miles of the border?
This is true regardless of whether or not non-criminals like Woz can.
A non-criminal using a fake ID is a victimless "crime", and as it is harmless, there is no moral issue with the performance of the act.
Showing fake IDs is harmless.
I've never tried to buy a ticket with false details though.
And at some early points when you did, it was more just like kind of informally showing you were the ticket-holder, not really about security. His "fake ID" saying he was a "laser inspector" is really just an employee ID for a very unsuccesful business he started, right? If they take an employee ID, what's the difference. it just... wasn't actually a big deal back then.
But yeah, in general... it's kind of painful to remember how much less we interacted with security checkpoints 30 years ago, and how much we've gotten used to living in a security state. The phrase "show me your papers" used to be a kind of shorthand for the idea that in a "fascist" state threatening law enforcement is always asking you for ID, but in "America" we can live our lives without interacting with such security apparatus. I doubt people think about it like that, as we live it now too, it's totally normalized.
that the reader may find it hard to believe that you didn't really have to show official ID to get on a plane, or that you could use a homemade employee ID... just demonstrates how normalized and forever-seeming the security state has become.
Although last I checked, you could actually still fly without ID, you need to fill out a form and get extra screening/pat down. Don't know if the "Real ID" stuff has changed that or what.
The requirement for a passport and appropriate visa on international flights departing from the UK is I think solely an airline requirement, as if you land in a country you don't have a right to immigrate to the airline gets fined. If you're flying privately it's a different matter.
Obviously you need a passport or other authority to travel when you get to the border of another country (Ireland being the obvious exception for the UK).
There is no harm in it. You may argue, "what if he was a terrorist!" But he wasn't. He caused no harm here.
Please stop being so condescending.
Counterpoint; why do city folk hold their police deparments in such low regard and scream for their defunding yet somehow hold the federal enforcement agencies in some do-no-wrong-holier-than-thou limelight?
But that didn’t stop them from thinking “we didn’t belong here”.
It’s the same reason NWA never wrote a song called “Fuck the FBI”…
I suppose I'm happy for you having the privilege to live such a sheltered life where you don't see any of this.
Yes, even the Postal Marshals.
When we say “defund the police”, it includes federal law enforcement.
As in, deeply offensive to some people.
edit: 2 downvotes? seriously? here's a source https://toofab.com/2020/06/19/white-cops-handed-a-dying-14-y...
This needs a citation. It's the sort of "common sense" all too often advanced by people with - frankly - racist or ethnonational agendas.
It's not a race issue when this is experienced in Africa/Japan/Sweden/Finland.
Calling new idea to you racist is racist. Most of the times the word racist is used it is used incorrectly and often in a racist way.
There's a straight line between that argument - which again, almost always gets through around with out any kind of citations or research support - and ethnic cleansing. It's directly attached to racist ideas. Similar to social darwinism, it's something that seems like relatively harmless common sense on the surface, but leads to horrific implications when followed to its logical conclusion.
You just argue that people shouldn't acknowledge it because doing so would lead to policies you think would be immoral.
I'm just not sure that this anti-truth stance is tenable or really worth it. What if we can acknowledge the facts and then... handle them in a non-evil way?
Or perhaps even use that knowledge to head off terrible outcomes that might otherwise happen? E.g. Lebanon-style ethnic civil wars.
I generally think that knowing the truth is useful and equips you to do good things. You just need a non-childish moral system to integrate it (too easy to feel moral if you just wish away the hard facts of the universe).
So when I asked ChatGPT
> Are countries with less racial diversity more likely to have a larger safety net”
because my GoogleFu was failing me, of course it gave me a non controversial generic answer.
But when I asked it for citations it gave me this
> A 2018 study published in the journal Social Science Research, which found that countries with more ethnically diverse populations tend to have less generous welfare states.
Which led me to this link
https://academic.oup.com/esr/article/37/1/89/5934740
> First, vignette experiments established a consistent and pervasive deservingness gap: welfare recipients belonging to the ethnic ingroup are more likely to be considered deserving of welfare support than the ethnic outgroup
In most countries that are ethnically diverse, that diversity was created through various forms of colonialism. Often with racial imperialism deeply ingrained in it. Which means those countries have long running strains of racist ideas and ideologies that forms the foundations of the ethnic "in group" and "out group".
Which is not to say that ethnic strife doesn't exist in non-colonial countries as well, but that this line of thinking and examination is a) extremely complex, b) inextricable from the history of the systems under examination, c) inextricable from deep histories of racist thought - often imposed by colonnial or imperialist powers, and d) similar to social darwinism in that it is often presented as common sense, but leads to some very dark places when taken, unexamined, to its logical conclusion.
You do raise a fair point
Jumping straight to claiming someone has a racist or ethnonational agenda because they didn't provide a citation seems uncharitable. It comes off as a worse form of sealioning. I'm not sure if you're trying to do that intentionally but I mention it so you can understand the hostility it may create.
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1467-9477.2007...
From Wikipedia on the study:
Harvard professor of political science Robert D. Putnam conducted a nearly decade long study on how diversity affects social trust. He surveyed 26,200 people in 40 American communities, finding that when the data were adjusted for class, income and other factors, the more racially diverse a community is, the greater the loss of trust. People in diverse communities "don't trust the local mayor, they don't trust the local paper, they don't trust other people and they don't trust institutions," writes Putnam.
That said, there can both be problems and benefits of something, and in his research on diversity this is considered:
Putnam says, however, that "in the long run immigration and diversity are likely to have important cultural, economic, fiscal, and developmental benefits."
He asserted that his "extensive research and experience confirm the substantial benefits of diversity, including racial and ethnic diversity, to our society."
You're welcome to argue the absence of causation.
Even Atherton was more diverse back then.
Lives in Los Gatos: https://censusreporter.org/profiles/16000US0644112-los-gatos...
Are there any quantitative studies on this topic? It would be a stronger argument if a clear trend was observable over many countries.
I’d rather live in a diverse hellhole than some whitewashed “utopia”.
That's no longer the case and hasn't really been for a decade or two at least. Especially in Sweden.
Heightened social trust in people of one's own ethnicity isn't a fact of life, it's just racism. It's what causes PoC to be profiled by law enforcement, on average have worse outcomes for the same crimes in the justice system, etc.
I know that this isn't just the way humans are wired. I met so many people (including police) in my life that I would consider truly "colorblind" and treat everyone with respect, regardless of their ethnicity.
Different shared cultural values (as opposed to just differing race) is also not as much of a problem as some make it out to be. First, most cultures of people that are immigrating to the US (I can't speak for Europe, I'm not very in the loop) have values largely compatible with Western ones. Second, most immigrants will at least somewhat assimilate into the culture of their host country, especially after a generation or two. Note, this doesn't mean throwing away their native culture.
I'd also like to point out that Woz's America was definitely NOT homogenous.
It is a fact of life, it's natural and there's a clear evolutionary impetus for it. I would argue that this is how we are wired.
Of course we feel more comfortable among our own. You are far more at ease if you walk into a room to be surrounded by people just like you, rather than strangers from the other side of the world with their alien appearances, behaviours, and even smells! Who knows how the reptilian subconscious analyses this information - are we at war? conquered? lost? isolated? kidnapped?
In a more modern sense, we can more readily let out guard down among our own, knowing we share a common history, culture, humour, etc, while we must precariously navigate the invisible minefield of sensitivities in a more diverse group.
I think implicit in your comment is the assumption that people with different backgrounds are somehow defacto strangers. But what makes it all work on a university campus, imo, is that everyone has a purpose; there are no scary strangers because everyone's motivations are well-understood, since everyone on campus has a job to do. No one is really a stranger.
It doesn't matter if you are of a different color or gender, or that you come from a place I've never been to, or that you speak a language I've never heard, or that you eat food I've never tasted. My lizard brain doesn't kick in when I interact with you because you are just here to study and learn, or to help in that process.
As an example, I am a professor and I have a new colleague. He is from the other side of the world, he was born a decade before me, he eats food different from mine, he worships a different God than I do. But we get along just fine, and that's because despite all those differences, we still have more in common than not. And even if we didn't, we still have to rely on one another and work as a team to achieve a common goal.
Now if I go to India to do some work I will seek out some other Americans to befriend while there, perhaps naturally looking for people like me. But by this I mean other Americans whether Indian-American or otherwise -- I don't mean whites who literally look like me. Get it?
For example, a white American of Slavic descent is more comfortable in a room of non-white Americans who also smell of Budweiser than they would be in a room of Russians in Russia speaking Russian and smelling of vodka. Get it?
Is it? I reject this wholesale. Do you have evidence?
If you do, why have you set definitions of "otherness" at skin color? I feel quite comfortably "among my own" alongside basically any human, because they're humans just like me. Don't you?
Frankly that's arrogant and narrow-minded view; homogenous culture might cause less conflicts and problems when the culture itself is one promoting that in the first place
The U.S. is one of the higher-trust societies, socially, while also being extremely racially diverse.
It sounds like pro-social culture and your people being rich probably matter more than race, and Eastern Europe has a critical deficit in both of those. :p
The countries with lowest crime numbers in EU per capita are (ordered by crime rate increasing): Slovakia, Hungary, Estonia, Cyprus, Slovenia, Czechia, Poland, Bulgaria, Croatia, Lithuania, Romania.
All of them are socially pretty homogenous. Most of them escaped Soviet block. Some even escaped Soviet Union. On the other hand, look at the countries from the other side of chart (this time, rate decreasing): Belgium, Spain, Portugal, Sweden, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Germany.
As this data concerns only EU, there is no UK here, but as I remember, it had around 3x crime rate as the Republic of Ireland, which would put it on the tops of the EU list.
Of course, increased diversity might not be the only differentiator between the countries from the top of the list and those from the bottom, but I think it defeats your point (almost as if you were racist for having irrational fears against living in a post-soviet society, which aren't backed by numbers).
The degree of ethnic homogeneity did not increase during that time, if anything it slightly decreased (or significantly in some major cities).
One possible explanation is that people willing to engage in low level crime simply moved to richer western countries because well they were (and still are) richer... e.g. in Norway Lithuanians are the second largest group of people who are imprisoned (after local Norwegians). The situation is similar in some other Western European countries. I'm not an expert but if I wanted to rob/steal from people and businesses I'd probably do that in Norway, Germany, or Switzerland rather than Romania or Lithuania. The risk versus reward ratio seems much better there. Also there prisons are way nicer (especially in Norway).
I would say, that based on my experience on growing in Poland (I was born in 1998), the people become richer and suddenly everybody now seems to be minding own business. So after you fill some economic needs, the will to pick on people decreases. But that will is surely dependent on how much you trust others are think similar (and won't rob you).
Anyway, the parents' commenter point was > near perfect "ethnical cohesion", doesn't stop crime or increase trust in any way
I can't see why should it be true. Perhaps it doesn't stop crime completely, but perhaps it actually increases trust. Based on the argument above we can't know.
Why? Obviously the majority of those who emigrated did not do so with the intention to commit crimes. However some people did. The question is whether they are under/over represented in the emigrant population.
Another aspect is that high emigration generally results in better conditions for those who remain due to higher demand for labor. Which might also decrease crime due to lower unemployment/higher wages.
> Perhaps it doesn't stop crime completely, but perhaps it actually increases trust
According to https://ourworldindata.org/trust Eastern European countries have lower interpersonal trust compared to most Western European countries and especially Scandinavia.
Of course it's also a question of attitude. And people in different cultures might interpret the question differently and/or be predisposed to answer it in a certain way even. Then again being from the region myself I can't really say that people here trust others more than in WE, ussually it's the opposite especially outside of certain social groups.
Then again crime rates in Belarus for instance don't seem to be much higher than in Poland or Lithuania.
Source: attended 100+ weddings as a photographer.
And if they had apprehended Woz he would probably had a lawyer to bail him out and smooth things over. So coming from these two directions the argument that fooling around was somehow traitorous behaviour towards his wife sounded really odd.
I think I was listening to a world-famous rock climber who had toned down their extreme sports adventures (toned down for them) because they didn’t want to die and leave their spouse and child without a father over the pursuit of a hobby. So it’s a maturity thing too.
I don’t think anything Woz has done is moderately dangerous. If they wanted to lock him up I’m sure he could call to a competent lawyer and state he is a respectable citizen who co-founded the friggin Apple.
Woz has an extremely long history of egging people of authority and I don’t think he’s ever been to court from those escapades (please correct me if I’m wrong).
I would hope we're not in such a world though.
Alligevel vedtager I en "Ghettopakke", der lovligt legaliserede at splitte migrantfamilier fra hinanden. I er lige så dårlige som resten af andre hvide mennesker, jeg har mødt.
[0] - https://euromedmonitor.org/en/article/4895/Denmark:-Ghetto-P...
[1] - https://www.ohchr.org/en/press-releases/2020/10/un-human-rig...
Now, our discussion was about Woz's zany antics, but I still have to clarify some geographical things:
1. Western Europe[0] and nordics[1] are two disjoint sets of countries
2. Of 28M nordic people only roughly 1/5 is Danish. And, there is very little political cohesion between the countries, except by national parliaments copying established successfull schemes from each other when it suits them individually
Personally, I am a Finn and had to google translate the bit of Danish in your message - I don't really follow Danish politics but I don't think it's fair to think every Dane would support this bill. This is actually the first time I read about this.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Nations_geoscheme_for_E...
Idk, for some reason the idealization of "Nordics" (itself a highly contentious term - is Estonia nordic? is Greenland?) on internet forums gets annoying, because I can just tell it's white people (in reality Western European+American, not like Romanians, Bosnians, Turks, or Albanians got it better in Malmö) talking to other white people and just completely ignoring the very real elephant in the room.
Once again sorry about that but I think that offhand comment the GP made was the straw that broke the camel's back for me.
Nordic countries is a well defined collection https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nordic_countries - Greenland/Nuuk is part of them given it is a region of Denmark.
I don't think the racism can be helped short term - nordics have been isolated polities that only in past decades have had large flows of migrants from different cultures. (Well, apart from Sweden attempting to conquer Europe in the 17th century but it did not end well).
If it's any consolation nordic people can be quite xenophobic even toward each other so it's not as if they would be uniquely harsh towards specific ethnicity. Every non-native will be discriminated against pretty much equally, regardless of origin or complexion. They abhor anything unfamiliar regardless of complexion. The general narrative of historical racism in these areas is quite different as compared to more cosmopolitan western countries such as UK, France or US.
Law of Jante is a pretty good framework for understanding the nordic mindset (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_of_Jante) - the baseline response even towards in-group members that are different will be severe.
It's changing, but change will take time.
One can have a good lawyer but that lawyer cannot change the facts of the case.
His quote reads like a confession...
The main issue is that he's not at the Department of Defense HQ presenting his Department of Defiance ID, claiming to be with the government but intending to present the joke as an excuse if it fails. In this case he wasn't trying to claim to be government to get out of anything so it's pretty obvious that it's a joke.
> 18 U.S. Code § 1028 (4)knowingly possesses an identification document (other than one issued lawfully for the use of the possessor), authentication feature, or a false identification document, with the intent such document or feature be used to defraud the United States;
He wasn't using the fake part of the ID, just his real name, and it's obvious that it wouldn't have done him any good to do so because there's no legal exemption for laser safety officers. It's pretty obvious that there was intent, this was a conscious act, but also that there was not intent to defraud.
Defiance
People are frothing to frame this story with 2023 glasses and, to me, this reaction makes it all the more clear how today’s culture is so corrosive. Maybe I’m wrong. Maybe it’s not about privilege of rich white men. Maybe it’s about the rigid conformism that the tech industry has imbued in its people in this past decade. The screams of people glued to Anki preparing for leetcode interviews, not understanding why someone would dare challenge the status quo. Regardless, it’s a sign of the times.
No idea what kind of high profile business owners you know, but in my circle in Belgium, most are small business owners. In my experience, employees like to follow rules, business owners like to push their boundaries.
I agree that what you are talking about applies to scrappy startup types, the same people that eventually stop breaking the rules once they have enough power not to need to.
I used to ride fast motorcycles. I know people who ran from the police for fun. Better camera tech in recent years means nobody gets away with that anymore. And when caught, your life grinds to a hault.
Can we stop being so obtuse and only look at the letter of the law and think about the actual practical real-life consequence as a measure of severity? This was a joke, and no harm was done.
Are you really advocating for a felony offence here?
This is the same line of thinking, just reversed, that people use to say "well it's not illegal" when someone does something super shitty that actually has awful consequences.
You can argue that 'well it was a joke!!' but if you were to joke around to your nearest FBI officer about how you have a bomb in your home and you're going to use it I imagine they wouldn't find it very funny.
Agreed! Joking about a bomb is a much more serious and very different situation than showing a joke ID in a relaxed situation - and when you probably have your real ID in your pocket.
In your scenario, would you actually be ok or understanding if the "angry officer" made an example of you for this harmless joke? Or would you maybe protest that it was a bit disproportionate or unnecessary?
And finally, hearing people say "jokes are dangerous" in a serious manner makes me very sad for our society. The level of unconscious mass conformism seems to be growing fast, and historically that never leads to good outcomes.
Is there an ‘unless you’re Woz and it might be funny’ exception to that rule?
The fact is there is, and always has been, a ‘wealthy white guy’ exception to that rule and these kinds of shenanigans just draw attention to it.
They key concept here is 'trickery', and how 'tricked' someone is on a spectrum. Society trusts our authorities to give their best efforts to keep our daily actions within the realm of 'the law'.
There is a spectrum of what one considers a 'joke'. If you tell an authority a dad joke, when they ask you a serious question, that is a fine place on the spectrum to joke with authorities. If you are giving them fake IDs to _trick_ them (and thus, trick society at large, who have delegated power to the authorities by vote etc...), that is not a good thing, to trick others you are living with, at the far end of the 'joke/trickery' spectrum.
Probably because the number of instances of people with real bombs has gone up. It’s not a joke any more because the real bomb isn’t the exception.
A healthy society both has rule following and rule challenging. Sometimes there’s too much rule following, sometimes there’s too much chaos, and then things balance themselves out ideally.
If anyone says only one side is the right one, they are ideologically captured. It’s like saying only left or right is the right way to govern a country. It’s both and neither. We need this conflict within society to arrive at healthy decisions.
Get rid of one side at your peril.
Because police rely on technology committing a crime without your cellphone means you most likely will not get caught. We live in an age where wearing masks is acceptable. Where people let you steal from stores and where crime is ignored unless it's on twitter.
You can get away with so much more today.
Depends if you have something to lose. I suspect a lot of readers here are in the middle ground, where their net present value (including career/family/political/etc opportunities) is not high enough where they can afford to shield themselves without big sacrifices. But it is also not low enough to worth risking losing it all.
For example, they might be able to afford a house in a nice school district, daycare, saving for retirement, paying for healthcare, and taking care of elderly parents, but a job loss from one spouse could easily derail this train, and certainly legal expenses would.
This 'time machine' feature of ubiquitous surveillance is going to be a brave new world.
Well ngl, you sound like you could use less time on the internet yourself. This statement is just preposterous unless you spend hours of your life every day obsessing over twitter drama.
Standard caveat of being a middle class white dude makes this easier.
Amusing story tho.
Don't try to be too curious then, or you will be prosecuted.
I'm sure I when I first read this story, I thought it was hilarious. But since then, I've gained at least little bit of empathy. Think of this story from the perspective of the other people. Woz is being a total piece of shit, wasting their time being intentionally as suspicious as possible, just to waste their time and then pull off a "a-ha, this is actually some really obscure legal tender that I as a rich guy can afford to spend to have a cool story to tell about showing up a casino security guy".
I agree with the GP that this kind of thing should be celebrated on HN and we should encourage the next generation to continue hacking.
Now, Woz was obviously an amazing hacker back in the day and has a reputation of being a good person. So one would imagine there are stories that show him being really clever that are, you know, actually clever rather than just showing off an information asymmetry about trivia (re: these sheets of $2 bills). Where the punchline is something wholesome, rather than him humiliating strangers who have done literally nothing wrong.
Seems to be an opportunity if good faith predicts that they won't do him any serious wrong.
> But I had got a big point on him and I was quite satisfied in that
Like, I can sort of understand the humor value of giving away $2 bills as a tip since they're rare and some people don't know about it. But there is literally no value in baiting people as to whether this is legit money or counterfeit, except for Woz to feel superior to them. And it's not an isolated occurence! He clearly does this all the time, so often that he has multiple variants of the script.
This is not a story to celebrate. It is not challenging the status quo, it is not rebelling against authority, it is not a smart hack, or whatever y'all are describing it as. It is an ugly story of a man with a lot of wealth punching down, playing games using the little people as a prop purely for his own amusement, repeatedly, and then bragging about it.
The nasty act here, and possibly criminal, was the security guy calling the Secret Service and reporting on someone he knew wasn't actually guilty of anything.
> It is an ugly story ...
Of tedious security people inflating themselves by bothering normal people.
> it's not an isolated occurence! He clearly does this all the time
Thankfully, if these people go unchallenged then when they go off it's on a random unsuspecting person. He's prepared and can take it in stride.
The mistake was to engage with the SS agent without his lawyer. He pretty clearly wouldn't have been arrested but because he essentially volunteered for this fishing expedition they'll perform it.
Yes, trying to hurt somebody's ego would indeed be a pretty good example of humiliating them.
Look, if you think that the bound booklet of $2 bills is a fun gag, there's a humane and lighthearted way to do it. You use the bills as described, but if somebody seems even a bit uncomfortable with them you volunteer an explanation for what's going on. That way they actually have a cool story to tell. And the joke's on you, not them.
But that is not what Woz did. He intentionally made himself as suspicious as possible, in multiple ways, just to try to force people to investigate. It was all about showing his superiority over this sad loser working a 10-hour shift in a suit, who thought he knew a thing or two about counterfeit money. Well, he wasn't all that, and Woz sure showed him who the smartest guy in the room was.
> Thankfully, if these people go unchallenged then when they go off it's on a random unsuspecting person. He's prepared and can take it in stride.
No unsuspecting person would have this interaction in the first place. They would not have gone through the trouble of arranging for legit money to look counterfeit. That is not what normal people do. They would not have a script to follow to string people along, and carefully consider just what the optimal level of dodgy behavior would be. They would not waste others' time for their own amusement. Because that's not what people with even a pinch of empathy would do.
Put yourself into some work situation. I don't know, maybe you're a engineer given this is HN. And you get this bug report from a customer. It's really well written, has a screenshot showing the issue, and includes reproduction steps. You try to reproduce it, and can't. So you ask some questions from a customer, iterate a few times, add some logging statements and ask them to reproduce the problem. etc. And then finally the customer smugly says that there never was a bug. They photoshopped the screenshot, and made everything up. If you'd actually known how this program works, you'd have known that this bug could never exist. It's a hilarious gag, what a prankster! And you were paid for this work, no harm done, right?
No. Fuck that. I would be furious at having my time wasted like that. And this is what Woz did. Not just once, but probably dozens of times. That's just outright sociopathic behavior, and I cannot believe how many people here are defending it just because he is a member of your tribe.
If someone's ego is tweaked when they find they're wrong then perhaps that's a helpful thing to do.
> Look, if you think that the bound booklet of $2 bills is a fun gag, there's a humane and lighthearted way to do it. ... if somebody seems even a bit uncomfortable
They're for tips. If someone is uncomfortable they don't have to take them.
> It was all about showing his superiority over this sad loser working a 10-hour shift in a suit, who thought he knew a thing or two about counterfeit money. Well, he wasn't all that, and Woz sure showed him who the smartest guy in the room was.
That guy had already tested the bills and knew they were legit. If he was honestly curious how Woz got the bills he could have just asked. Instead he decided to fish around for anything he could try to rat out an innocent person for.
> No unsuspecting person would have this interaction in the first place.
But their cases would be identical from the PoV of the security guy. Some thing would "seem off" and the employee would follow them around or harass them over some legit thing that he didn't like and maybe even call the police about it.
If they think that some customers are playing games they might be a bit more on their toes and think about what they're doing, so as to not be caught in a prank. That will have a good impact on innocent people they interact with.
> [Scenario with fake bug report] then finally the customer smugly says that there never was a bug. ... made everything up. ... It's a hilarious gag, what a prankster!
That's nothing like this scenario. To try to correct it, Woz was happily using their app on his phone when an employee noticed what looked like an error. They stopped him and called him a hacker, tried to trick him into admissions, and when they finally reported and tracked down what he was doing it was just hitting back at the right time to avoid an interstitial, or whatever. The joke is that he was trying to say "it's fine" the whole time and everyone assumes he's a hacker so nobody listens, finally ending up with egg on their face when they wasted their own time.
> And you were paid for this work, no harm done, right?
Well, some to the company. I assume they'd say "maybe in the future, don't go wasting time pestering customers for something that we already knew didn't impact us." It's a teaching moment. It could save them from a lawsuit in the future if that guard thought he had the right to detain people.
> No. Fuck that. I would be furious at having my time wasted like that. And this is what Woz did. Not just once, but probably dozens of times. That's just outright sociopathic behavior,
You're overreacting. This is a perfect example of someone I'd feel needed to be pranked, because it sounds like you're ready to snap on anyone you think is mocking you and you're vastly more likely to do it to someone innocent than either a criminal or a prankster.
While people did debate the ethics of it, the hacking was admired because it was someone not in a position of power hacking an entity that was. It also illuminated a massive security risk which could now be fixed.
Something that drastically limits and can be used to oppress people like a nation-wide travel restriction should be public and require due cause. Not a mystical list where one day you realize "wow guess my life is fucked"
When it's the Secret Service, that's not "normal people", and their job is to figuratively or literally stomp anyone who doesn't sufficiently respect the immensely powerful people they insulate. Portraying them as regular Joe victim here is nonsense.
You know who's really wasting peoples time? Secret Service and a casino security guard because he tipped with legal tender that they haven't seen before, so they think he's some counterfeiter or something.
I'd fuck with authority who was too stupid to realize that $2 bills are very much legal tender.
Please tell me you see that. Or at least, are not personally ultrawealthy yourself.
Right now you’d have to be worried they draw a gun and shoot you, or arrest you and jail you for life. Zero tolerance!
Maybe it's good if the industry has ceased having such a teenagery view of things. The article won't load for me, but it seems there was no meaningful protest against some illicit government abuse of authority here. Dude was just printing and using fake IDs because he could.
As a millennial who used to be much more simpatico with your way of thinking, I would say I've become very against it because it is exactly the sort of attitude that I have seen lead people to Trumpsim, anti-vaxxing, etc. It's just irresponsible and arrogant to think that authority/government = bad and that any sort of finger to the man is intrinsically worth celebrating.
But after thinking about it more -- and I'm in my mid-40s -- I think what it also reminds us of is that law enforcement actually used to be a lot more reasonable -- to be clear, this may probably only apply to white people who appear as if they are not poor. But I think maybe the police (whether local or national security) have actually maybe gotten a lot more intense in the past 30 years. Possibly actually more intense for everyone.
The risks of "messing with" security personel, at least for middle-class-appearing white guys, was very definitely a lot less back then.
No, it just use to be a lot less recorded…
And no minority with a sense of history would say that police have ever been “reasonable”
I'm curious if you are old enough to remember the 80s, although I'm not going to bet any precious precious donuts about it.
How state violence and repression was in the 80s isn't good enough, agreed. But things actually do change, get better and worse in different dimensions. If we insist that things have always been exactly as they are, then it seems fatalistic, they can't possibly change, this is the way it's always been and always will be. But things do change. If they were better in some ways 30 years ago, then this isn't inevitable.
Woz was a prankster, including against those in authority. Look up some of the pranks the MIT "hackers" pulled back in the day. Today, some of them would probably get you arrested on domestic terrorism charges. This is not an improvement, even if it's true that the police of course have always been brutal in some times and places, especially depending on social position of the victims. But nobody (I hope) is looking for equality of brutal discipline, equally oppressive to all.
And as it was revealed last week in Memphis, I don’t anymore breathe a sign of relief when I see a Black cop than when I see a White cop.
I don't think this jives with your comment that law enforcement use to be reasonable. I think this highlights unequal enforcement of the law, depending on who is considered undesirable.
Woz was not in custody and is therefore exaggerating about being Mirandized. He played a prank by giving his clown employee ID. It was in Casinoland where people had goofy job titles and this wouldn't have been so crazy. Nothing to see here.
That said, if he had been in actual trouble or has been committing forgery, the clown ID would have been a bad move.
Can still fly in USA without ID. The checkpoint "agents" have you sign a special form. Last summer I "Scotch" taped the crap out of the barcode and picture on my passport. Checkpoint person asked me why and I mumbled because the real answer was "to see what happens." She called supervisor and he quickly waved me through. May be different effect at immigration.
I love the story.
I'm not a lawyer, I have no idea how criminal law in the USA works, but why would this be a crime? He didn't fake a Department of Defence ID, he created an ID for a fictional Department of Defiance, it may look similar, it may appear as a "real" ID because it's not just a piece of paper, but it's about as real an ID as a gym membership card.
But they were convinced my goal was to go there to live. they tore my car apart, took everything out of luggage. They let me go but thought I was never coming back.
All I was doing was going to a Thanksgiving dinner in Scranton.
I think the easiest way to prosecute this would be under the "authentication features" section:
(1) the term “authentication feature” means any hologram, watermark, certification, symbol, code, image, sequence of numbers or letters, or other feature that either individually or in combination with another feature is used by the issuing authority on an identification document, document-making implement, or means of identification to determine if the document is counterfeit, altered, or otherwise falsified
If he had replicated any of those things, he committed a crime just by making the ID. Using the ID likely has additional penalties, but just making it is a felony by itself. It seems likely he did, because I think missing seals and watermarks (if those existed at the time) would stand out as obvious to a secret service agent or the TSA.
(Also, falsely claiming a relationship with the military is downright dishonerable.)
Showing a counterfeit driver’s license, passport etc. is obviously a crime. What he did was equivalent to showing your company issued ID. Would that be a crime?
Definitely taboo enough to get you chewed out, and almost enough to risk a physical altercation.
Someone asked me when I was in the Army and not thinking about why they asked I just said I wasn’t.
They almost started to chew me out until I mentioned it was given to me as part of an Army sponsored fundraiser.
It also makes me think of my uncle who is a very proud labor union member. He gets upset if anyone says anything disparaging about labor unions.
My point is, it sounds to me like people taking honor in being a member of an exclusive club, and they don't like it if other people do things to belittle their club membership, like by pretending to be a member.
I wonder if there is some psychological term for that behavior.
A civilian wearing an army T-shirt is not “stolen valor” in the sense that stolen valor is a crime, so this is, at best, equivocation.
While I believe (but I don’t feel like checking the UCMJ) there is a much more extensive crime (or set of crimes) relating to stolen valor within the military, the crime of stolen valor that it is possible for a civilian to commit consists of, and (outside of selling military decorations) only of, fraudulently claiming one of narrow set of awards with the intent to obtain money, property, or other tangible benefit, specifically: a Congressional Medal of Honor, a distinguished-service cross, a Navy cross, an Air Force cross, a silver star, a Purple Heart, a Combat Infantryman’s Badge, a Combat Action Badge, a Combat Medical Badge, a Combat Action Ribbon, a Combat Action Medal, or any replacement or duplicate medal for such medal as authorized by law. 18 USC Sec. 704.
Wearing a band shirt and an army shirt are not comparable at all. The default thought when someone sees someone wearing a military shirt is “oh they were in the military”. The thought when wearing a band shirt certainly wasn’t “oh they must be in the who”.
Again, no, not in a sense of “stolen valor” where “stolen valor is a crime” is true, it isn’t. You are still engaging in thebsame equivocation where you are trying make an argument grounded in “this behavior has a name which is also the name of a crime”, even though the behavior in question is not within the scope of the definition of the crime. Fraud is a crime (older than “stolen valor”, which is a novel 21st century crime in the US), pretending to have been in the military other than as part of a fraud scheme is not. (ISTR at least one state has proposed a more general ban on this, but even if it passed it would likely be struck down aa violating the First Amendment, just like the earlier and somewhat broader version of the Stolen Valor Act was.)
> Wearing a band shirt and an army shirt are not comparable at all.
To the extent that there is a defensible argument for this position, it doesn't involve invocations of non-germane criminal law.
I wasn't trying to make light of the service of military members. I agree that it is wrong to try to obtain fake respect.
I was just recounting two specific tales from my memory about people being defensive against others disrespecting their social circles. I find the behavior interesting ... maybe because I have never felt that way before about something.
When I mentioned psychology, my curiosity was in the context of behavior psychology (what is the word used to describe the behavior), not in the context of a mental illness.
Incidentally, I did like the band's music, I just didn't own any of their albums.
In the United States, the military has no authority over citizens. It's a foundational law. Exceptions can be made under temporary and unusual circumstances.
But everyone in the military is indoctrinated to believe that they are serving their country.
Some of them are shipped overseas. Some live in Virginia Beach. Some are physically endangered. Some sit behind a desk.
There are good and noble people who choose a life of service. Some of them are in the military. Some of them are food kitchen volunteers.
Not everyone in the military is noble, or serving their country. Any more than any other federal employee.
It's difficult to know the appropriate level of respect or honor to give to a random person displaying the paraphernalia of military service. "Thank you for your service" is free, and perhaps genuinely felt and received in some cases (but also vacuous at times).
I've worked with a lot of ex-military folks. And several members of my family are current or former members. I can't think of a single trait that is common to all of them.
Not physical fitness. Not leadership skills. Not honesty or honor or respectability. Not intelligence or grit or perseverance or fashion sense.
The median is probably higher than the average across the whole population. So there may be a correlation. Except fashion sense!
However this does not persuade me that there's a reason to differentially treat military vs random citizens in your example of a traffic stop. But I'm also not a cop!
I stopped reading here. Every military member swore an oath. They have no choice of duty, but they still swore the same oath to die for their country. Anybody attempting to minimize their sacrifices should remember things like Pearl Harbor, which killed all indiscriminately. And remember that desks fit in tents fit on ships and in tents, which are themselves in active war zones.
It feels good and honorable to say, just like defending a member of your family. That is a goal of the mythology, and it works! It's a hell of a drug.
I don't intend to criticize the military -- combat or non.
But the psychology of it is fascinating.
This seems like a psychological issue with some demanding they have given just as much, and are just as important, yet are too scared to pay the ultimate price.
Or how about the psychological issue that results in hatred towards the military? That one I witnessed personally and I find very interesting.
Additionally how many business owners are willing to die for their business?
It's a job, like any other job. People do it because they want to get paid and military worship is ridiculous.
They need a job and being a soldier is a job. A glorified one where words like bravery and valor are thrown around in the US to make people accept risking their life in a noble way.
And I realize that some people will actually be driven by these ideals and there are things like military families where this tradition is actually strong and it gives them purpose but for the average soldier, they just needed a job and the propaganda worked.
The sentiment for the military and first responders is that they either have already, or could at any moment, be called upon to put their health and life at risk on behalf of the rest of us citizens and allies - so that the rest of us can live a free and peaceful life in pursuit of happiness. The sentiment is one of sincere gratitude of the deepest variety.
I personally don't think the existence of this ID card mocking the DoD is anything but harmless fun. In fact, the freedom to make such content is a part of the freedom of speech the DoD works to protect. However, as much as I enjoy Woz, I agree that giving a false ID to someone a law enforcement agent who is simply trying to do their job, isn't smart or too funny, it's intentionally obfuscating a process and stealing time (tax payer dollars) from the agent trying to do their potentially deangerous job and prosecute true bad actors.
Law enforcement in the US is far from perfect, and trust me, there's a place and value to peaceful civil dissobedience. However, there's also a psychological and monetary cost. The costs of Woz's act seem very benign to me, but I can see how others could easily get spun-up about it - especially if your job is law enforcement.
American exceptionalism is a thing to believe in which satisfies all of the needs of a believer. It's part of the belief triad "god-family-country".
The military is an extension of the country. There is very little visible military presence in the US, and the military has no role in civilian affairs except in cases of temporary callup for natural disasters etc.
And yet it's a very big military, so everyone has some adjacency to present or historical members of the military.
In short, it's the perfect object of optimistic belief. The military is consistently the "most trusted" part of American society -- perhaps because all the things it does, it does elsewhere.
And for the most part, American foreign policy is pretty similar across political lines, so there's no inherent partisan rift, making it an easy and safe thing for everyone to agree on.
A foreigner might argue that that is a flimsy basis for belief. They might point to some tragic events visited upon the world by the US military. They might say that Normandy was a long time ago and it doesn't justify everything that's happened since then.
Many Americans would agree with that. But that's the outsider's view. First and foremost, internally, the military is a jobs program. And it's very very good at that! Tons of training and education, incredible amounts of commerce and technology, genuine personal development, and on the whole very little international malfeasance.
Americans are optimistic people.
My optimism died the second time Bush Jr. was elected, but I'm only 49.
Cost of the Bush Era wars will probably reach $2 Trillion due to long-term healthcare costs for veterans (on top of the bombs and MRAPs and M-16s, etc.).
One of the biggest financial coups in US history. Mission Accomplished indeed -- cuz that's what he was celebrating with that flight.
Search for the list of the richest counties in the US, and notice how many of them are in the Greater Washington DC area (VA & MD).
Enrolling into military is a choice and you know risks beforehand, there’s nothing about that choice that deserves worship-like cult status military has in US.
But psychologically, the drive to be a part of something important is very strong, especially in young men.
The military has a rich mythology that plays into, and perpetuates, this.
This is not bad or unhealthy! But it is also not inherently good. There are other groups which use the same tactics to recruit people for bad services. It very very much depends.
But like any source of low-cost energy, some of it is diverted into unproductive things!
This is true for most forces. All the US allies working in Iraq/Iran weren’t robots.
1. Although military people are paid, it's not enough to compensate the amount of time, health risks, and loss of normal rights and freedoms experienced by young people.
2. Are we better off or worse off if people think of service as just a job to pay the bills? I'm not naiive about this, but we want people to take it seriously, not treat it like a retail job at the mall.
3. A small number will ultimately die. I think you would be a foolish leader/government to give those people who died for you anything but respect if you hope for similar sacrifice in the future.
Well, he was on a thin ice but nevertheless still within bounds of the law. He did not forge or fake the ID, it was a fictitious one like Disney World passport. The ID had his real name on it, no lies there. The $2 bills were legit as well. And mocking federal agent was not a crime.
Just like you'd be fucked if you tried to deposit dollars for the federal bank of amerigo, your fake country.
The US has streamlined this relative to other countries. You don't have to commit a crime, you just irritate a LEO and they find the crime for you.
Under 18 U.S.C. § 1001, it's a felony crime to: make a “false statement” to an agent of the > federal government related to a federal matter.
...
A “false statement” can be:
a material omission.
a material misrepresentation, or.
using a fraudulent document.
Please do not try this kind of thing in real life.
In the event it got to court, any sane lawyer would advocate for a yes it was wrong, but there was no ill intent defense. Trying to split hairs about the difference between a “fake id” and merely a made-up ID would just be digging deeper into the hole.
When you’re pulled over for 70 in a 60, you own it, acknowledge the mistake, and hope that recognizance is enougn to get you off. You don’t create elaborate sophistries to “prove” that 70 is actually the same thing as 60, or that the signs that say 60 really mean 70. Nobody buys that kind of thing.
I think “novelty ID” may be more correct. Just like those novelty dollar bills that kind of look like real currency in some ways but still have significant distinctions.
https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/general-news/steve-jo...
Steve Jobs met his biological father accidentally at a restaurant.
Risky, but it doesn't sound like a forged government ID (driver's license, etc). It might have even had his actual name on it.
He got an obvious fake from a blond 6'2" guy. He gave it to our dark-haired 5'7" friend with a very different facial structure and told him to try it at several other bars in the area. Said friend got into every bar.
https://catalog.usmint.gov/paper-currency/uncut-currency/?&p...
Basically he tells story in a way that average person assume he’s printing fake bills, when in reality he’s just cutting and binding sets of uncut bills into a notepad.
Lying to a federal investigator though is a federal crime and one that’s frequently resulted in prison sentences.
Worth noting that Jobs & Woz first product was actually a device to make illegal free calls:
http://www.todayifoundout.com/index.php/2012/10/steve-jobs-f...
Not to mention that it is not a good look for a secret service agent to not know the details of the actual currency he is tasked to protect (e.g. available in perforated sheets). I suppose it is possible the agent got called in not knowing the specific details warranting arrest*, but that would be even worse.
* Am I right to think that Woz was arrested given that he was read his Miranda rights?
https://codes.findlaw.com/us/title-18-crimes-and-criminal-pr...
If the material information he provided was true then all the other silliness is just silliness. I mean, the agent is going to search on the name, probably find a photo in a license database, and confirm the guy is who he says he is, and that is the only point of asking for ID. They are hardly strong authenticators, and no professional is going to take some random bit of ID and use the non-identifying data on it to make decisions. What do you think they are going to do with the data anyway?
The fact is also that Woz did nothing wrong. So why does he have to automatically cowtow to an authority figure? He provided the materially important information in a humorous way. He didn’t do anything wrong. He poked the bear, but only a little bit.
Finally - not every citizen has a passport or even a drivers license. So even if requested, it’s not always possible to produce it.
Honestly - I admire Woz, but I will admit that I find his pranks to be a bit self indulgent. So what? He literally did nothing wrong and poked a bit of fun at the state.
Nothing for or against Woz, but I for sure would never intentionally provide fictitious information or document to US federal investigator if situation ever presented itself, since ultimately once done it would be up to the investigator to present it for prosecution and judge to decide if it merited conviction.
Woz makes it sound like the agent actually accepted the fake ID, but they clearly did not, since per Woz, they not only made him produce a drivers license, but also his passport.
Why even put yourself in that position over a joke?
Well yeah, I agree with you there. I wouldn’t have done it. Not that I think it’s right, but I suppose that being an old white billionaire changes the equation somewhat.
https://www.nolo.com/legal-encyclopedia/police-questioning-m...
Berghuis v. Thompkins in 2010[0] made it so that the suspect has to explicitly invoke their own right to remain silent – simply remaining silent is not enough. And just last year in Vega v. Tekoh[1] the Court decided that it is not a violation of your civil rights if you are not Mirandized, and you therefore cannot sue over it.
Together, this basically means that its incumbent on every single citizen to be aware of their Miranda rights, and to know the magic words to say. And you should really, really keep track of if your rights are read to you while you're in custody – police will certainly try to admit un-Mirandized evidence, even after all of that.
> Those magic words, legal experts told USA TODAY, must be affirmatively and explicitly stated as, for example, "I want my lawyer and I want to remain silent" or "I want my lawyer and am invoking my right to remain silent." And then you should stay silent.
[0] http://archive.boston.com/news/nation/washington/articles/20...
2. If you are reasonably suspected of being involved in something illegal, you can be detained until identified by some means.
2. It seems like the police officer has to be able to state what crime they suspect has been committed. Standing around looking suspicious is what usually draws attention but it isn't a crime so they just say no when the police ask for ID.
But that's for local police in some states. So again, is it different when you refuse ID to a federal officer? I think the answer is no, that there is no federal statute that requires you to identify yourself to a federal officer unless you are suspected of a committing a crime. But IANAL nor a member of law enforcement nor one of those ornery people who like to challenge the police and even hope they will be arrested on false pretenses so they can have fun suing the police.
That wouldn't be problem. Them problem is that it causes visits from the Secret Service. Happened to two of my friends - and only two friends that I know of having sheets of bills.
They seem to be primarily made as collectibles or silly gifts, I'd expect that most people who have them would not spend them.
They simply thought that so long as they found it amusing, the harm others experienced physically, emotionally, or materially, were not really of consequence. After all, surely if they were in their targets shoes, they would have thicker skin. And that definitely isn't a lie they're telling themselves and others.
I for one wish there were more real people around, living life for liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Like we were intended to live.
All of this said, I haven't seen a critical analysis of Peterson's theory, which from what I can tell, does not connect the dots, so to speak, from biological behavior to individual intentions. Still, I think it is fair to say that individual intentions are not required for Peterson's explanation. The human brain does much that is neither conscious nor intentional in the usual senses of the words.
This theory is really interesting to explore and extrapolate. I'll give an example. Let's say someone treats you with a normal level of politeness. You could argue that they are not messing with you, and not challenging your position in any dominance hierarchy. But perhaps this shows they feel confident enough to address you as a peer. Or perhaps they feel like they are in a higher position, and have no need to flaunt it. In any case, your subsequent response will provide a lot of data for the other person.
I think of the number of times that people humble brag. Or the subtle things people do to demonstrate knowledge. The more I think about it, the more I think Peterson's theory is useful in an explanatory sense.
To be clear, I'm not saying I agree with any moral philosophy that suggests such behavior is ideal from an ethical perspective.
“Haha, yes yes, Woz - You’re very funny. Got me again.”
I’m 30-something white guy, I can easily imagine not feeling comfortable trying that stupid joke if I was anyone else.
When the element of comedy hinges on hero being privileged it doesn’t mean it’s not funny, but it does prompt a thought experiment as to whether a world where there’s no such profiling and everyone is treated equal base trust is possible, and if so whether such a story could be funny in that world. Taking high-trust societies I can think of as examples, I suspect either total surveillance or high value placed on following protocols sincerely with the goal of not creating awkwardness would be implied, in which case probably not.
The true spirit of Woz is not to copy existing social hacks.
> Brian: Look, you've got it all wrong! You don't need to follow me. You don't need to follow anybody! You've got to think for yourselves! You're all individuals!
> Crowd: Yes! We're all individuals!
> Brian: You're all different!
> Crowd: Yes, we are all different!
> Man in crowd: I'm not...
> Crowd: Shhh!
Source: Monty Python
Framing one as a picture would seem to invite a burglary, and as a source of individual notes it’s much cheaper to go to a bank.
Edit: Not intended as a critical question, btw - I was just wondering how you’d use them.
Use them to tip like Steve Wozniak? :D
https://www.chicagotribune.com/nation-world/ct-mnuchin-money...
If I received one, I'd also be suspicious.
That said, I think it may be misdated, as I think the image is from closer to 2007/8, as I think I shot it on a 40D which only came out in Aug 2007. I've gone through 3 or 4 generations of photo library management software since then and the metadata may have gotten mangled.
``Because the individual notes on uncut currency sheets are legal tender, they may be cut apart and spent.''
Been a tradition ever since and our reputation as fans who “travel well” helped ensure bowl game preferences for years.
https://www.greenvilleonline.com/story/sports/college/clemso...
An ordinary civilian might fall down that hole never to come out again. Just showing a fake ID to a fed could be met with serious retribution.
Dangerous game to play, imagine trying to convince a judge that "I was not intentionally looking for trouble".
It also would seem likely that at least one protector of said currency (the agent in the story) didn't know his domain (currency sheets are legit).
Unless he just wanted to harrass Woz, or maybe because they suspected him of other mischief and wanted to see if he misstepped.
You cannot buy perforated currency booklets.
It's reasonable to be suspicious about the latter, especially as I suspect Woz didn't start the interview with "I bought the currency sheets then had them turned into this" - and anyways, by that time the agent had a checklist to run through, likely including the passport numbers etc. as mentioned in the article.
Even knowing that the bills are being sold in sheets, you wouldn't want to be the agent who let someone go who was doing everything exactly as Woz did except for getting the currency sheets from the guy printing the North Korean superbills...
https://en-academic.com/dic.nsf/enwiki/139493
Legends
One oft-repeated story featuring Captain Crunch goes as follows: Draper picked up a public phone, then proceeded to “phreak” his call around the world. At no charge, he routed a call through different phone switches in countries such as Japan, Russia and England. Once he had set the call to go through dozens of countries, he dialed the number of the public phone next to him. A few minutes later, the phone next to him rang. Draper spoke into the first phone, and, after quite a few seconds, he heard his own voice very faintly on the other phone. He sometimes repeated this stunt at parties. Draper also claimed that he and a friend once placed a direct call to the White House during the Nixon administration, and after giving the operator President Nixon's secret code name of "Olympus", and asking to speak to the president about a national emergency, they were connected with someone who sounded like Richard Nixon; Draper’s friend told the man about a toilet paper shortage in Los Angeles, at which point the person on the other end of the line angrily asked them how they'd managed to get connected to him.[8] Draper was also a member of the Homebrew Computer Club.[2]
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32723420
DonHopkins 4 months ago | parent | context | favorite | on: How MetroCard works (2005) [pdf]
Then there was the time the infamous phone phreak John "Cap'n Crunch" Draper got busted for forging BART Cards... Steve Wozniak and his son also got mistakenly busted and thrown in a holding cell for 4 hours because he had a (real) BART card that didn't work, so he got pissed off and ended up paying for Draper's attorney fees, and Draper copped to a misdemeanor of altering MUNI tickets, and went on probation for a year, but did not lose his job at Autodesk.
https://techmonitor.ai/technology/just_tacky
>TECHNOLOGY. March 1, 1987. JUST TACKY! By CBR Staff Writer.
>Aw c’mon John, forging the electronic characteristics of BART tickets is just tacky! John Draper, who inter alia wrote the Easy Writer word processing package, has been caught with $2,500 of forged access tickets to the San Francisco Bay-Area Rapid Transit subway system, and fellah, BART, which has never fully recovered from the teething troubles in the early days when trains used to whistle through stations at 60mph with the doors wide open, can’t afford it; Draper’s real claim to fame is that he discovered in the 1960s that a toy whistle given away in packets of a glutinous and bilious-coloured sugared corn puff cereal called Cap’n Crunch was pitched just right to mimic the tones AT&T used to set up long-distance calls, so that packs of the sickly Cap’n sold out as kids rushed to claim the whistles that enabled them to call auntie in Montana or Mary in Maine; that was ingenious if wicked, but forging BART tickets – tacky, John, tacky.
https://digibarn.com/collections/audio/digibarn-radio/06-05-...
>DigiBarn Radio: John Draper @ Autodesk (1985)
>Listen to John Draper talking about his Autodesk period, the BART card fiasco and more! (8MB MP3, recorded May 2006)
https://www.digibarn.com/collections/audio/digibarn-radio/06...
>John Draper at the Digibarn's Homebrew@30 event
>Thanks Tom Barbalet for recording this rare interview with John Draper (aka "Captain Crunch" or "Crunchman" these days) about his life at Autodesk, and the BART (Bay Area Rapid Transit) cards fiasco. Also included here are other life and times of "Crunch".
https://digibarn.com/collections/audio/digibarn-radio/06-05-...
Partial transcript (listen to the whole thing for the full story about the BART card fiasco -- I'm just transcribing the part about Woz getting arrested here):
[...]
John Draper: So Woz game me a Mac I could use, and Woz also go me a ... Cause Woz got hassled by the BART cops too.
Here's what happened, here's what happened at that point.
Woz went to go see the Oakland A's game. And what he wanted to do, he had his son with him. So his son I think at the time was about 9 years old. And he wanted to take his son to the Oakland A's game.
And his son says "Hey, daddy, can I ride BART?" Sure, why not? So he goes to Hayward BART, er, he goes to Hay- not Hayward, yeah, he goes to Hayward BART, yeah, parks the car, and rides BART to the Oakland Coliseum. Ok.
So what happened was, his son's BART card didn't work. He put it in to the turnstile, and it got rejected coming back. And Woz goes over to the BART attendant and says "Well my card doesn't work", he says "look, it comes back, it came back and said rejected or something."
And the guy, the BART attendant says "Wait right here." He gets on the phone, calls the BART cop. BART cop takes Woz and his son down to the Lake Merit Station, ok. At which time they grilled Woz about what he'd, that he'd, and they were claiming, accusing him of tampering with the cards, and they threw Woz and his son in a holding cell for like six hours.
Tom Barbalet: So let me get this straight.
John Draper: Until they could get an expert to come in and take a look at that card, to make sure that the card had not been tampered.
Tom Barbalet: And the card was a regular card that they just bought.
John Draper: Yeah, just a regular card that they just bought.
Tom Barbalet: So they knew your connection with him?
John Draper: No they did not know my connection with him.
Tom Barbalet: So how did, why was he...
John Draper: His card didn't work. They suspected that he had tampered with the card.
Tom Barbalet: But surely that would have happened to, just in a sample size, a hundred, maybe two hundred people in the Bay Area.
John Draper: I don't know the details, all I know is they arrested him and his son, and they held them up in a, put him in a holding cell for four hours, until they can wake up a, get the BART engineer to get out and examine the card, and once they figured out it was their fault, they let him go.
Tom Barbalet: Right.
John Draper: So when Woz found about the BART fiasco that I did, thing, that I got roped into, Woz says, "I got this attorney, I'll pay for, I'll pay for your legal attorney fees. Go see this guy. So I went and say this guy, this attorney. So he was handling my case in the BART thing.
[...]
> When he said that they don't make bills like this I asked "They don't?" as though I thought it was quite normal to have sheets. My answer was also so emotionless as to confuse him about me, and to make me seem even more evasive. This, again, I do for a comedic effect.
Is it just me, or does the man simply not understand what comedy is?
I enjoy a good joke as much as the next guy. That said, if you are routinely paying for items at the register by cutting bills off of a sheet with scissors and handing the police a fake ID when asked for identification, you’re basically asking for trouble. And you’re almost certainly going to waste a lot of people’s valuable time.
Generally speaking, I do really like Woz as a person. But in this particular instance, he does kind of come across as a big pain in the ass.
And that was a very odd story… he is an edgy guy.
I don't know if I'd say "edgy", so much as a hacker — and there have been hackers in all generations, eg https://books.google.ch/books?id=V3ByEAAAQBAJ&pg=PA575&lpg=P...
If I'm not mistaken, one tip I've heard is that one can transfer more than that in gifts yearly, and although that requires filing a gift tax return with the IRS, it doesn't mean necessarily mean paying any tax. There's a lifetime maximum that has to be hit, and it's extremely high. (I'm not a lawyer nor an accountant, and this is not legal or tax advice, yada yada)
"Extremely high" is relative (some 11 million, probably less at that time?), considering the person telling this story.
So if Woz had given $10,001, then he would have had to file it, and then when he died, it would have added $10,001 towards his total lifetime gift tax exclusion from his estate (currently $13M). But if he gave $10k (or whatever yearly reporting maximum) per year until he dies, then all of that does not get counted towards the $13M lifetime gift tax exclusion, so in a way, it is an additional tax reduction when the estate gets passed down.
https://www.irs.gov/businesses/small-businesses-self-employe...
> What can be excluded from gifts?
> The general rule is that any gift is a taxable gift. However, there are many exceptions to this rule. Generally, the following gifts are not taxable gifts.
>Gifts that are not more than the annual exclusion for the calendar year.
>Tuition or medical expenses you pay for someone (the educational and medical exclusions).
>Gifts to your spouse.
>Gifts to a political organization for its use.
>In addition to this, gifts to qualifying charities are deductible from the value of the gift(s) made.
https://www.irs.gov/businesses/small-businesses-self-employe...
Woz and Jobs got their first big break from selling physical copies of the 'Blue Box', a device which allowed you to place long-distance phone calls through intelligently breaking AT&T's phone routing network. In today's 'wire fraud' day and age, this 100% would have been illegal -- so note that these two people made today's most valuable company!
Relatively speaking, printing a photo ID or $2 bills is nothing. It is the hacker spirit (notice we are on a site called hacker news!).
A few years ago I had the privilege of meeting the woz after an event at which he was a speaker.
I was surprised at how humble and patient he was with people vying for his attention, many asking for him to autograph laptops and whatever else they had at hand.
I got his attention when I asked him about tetris and we geeked out a bit over it. Thats a story for another day but I did walk away from that conversation with a prized souvenir -- an autographed $2 bill: https://imgur.com/gallery/TQo0KOi
... and a laser cut steel business card :)
I can see the playful side of it, but people and places where pranks are not generally well received would be federal agents and casinos - so from the ‘victims’ point of view I expect they could have done without the bother.
When you are a retired billionaire, you have freedom to explore.
See also Penn Jillete's airport "security" protest, though he wasn't retired or a billionaire , but was willing to spend his time/money/privilege fighting for our rights.
There was a man in Italy nicknamed il Professore who was notorious for producing them in bulk while not being particularly conspicuous about it.
According to an anecdote from one of his family members when a cashier tried to confirm whether the 20€ banknote he gave her was legitimate he said "lady, it costs me 18€ to make one of these, so I don't even bother".
How times have changed.
[1] https://web.archive.org/web/20120127020131/http://archive.wo...
It wasn't always like this, even just 5 years ago. I don't know where all the weirdos came from but they've fundamentally changed this site, and not in a good way.
I asked for a lot of £5 (smallest denomination note in UK) at the bank once because I was going to a music festival (before mobile card payment was routine). They asked me casually why I wanted them and I explained. Seems to be a Know Your Customer thing.
It's also the case that criminals prefer cash, and a large number of small denomination notes could be used to facilitate a large number of small value crimes more easily.
Drug dealing is the obvious one, but there are others. I witnessed a shoplifters being stopped by a security guard once, with £200 worth of goods in their coat (booze, steaks), and they offered a £5 note - "it's all I have" - and by making that offer of payment, they reduced the crime and the penalty somewhat to the point the manager and security officer removed the goods, asked them to leave and told them they weren't welcome any more - no police involved. For all that bank knew, you were running a gang of shoplifters doing this.
In my jurisdiction it is enough if it is evident that you intent to steal something. Theft can only be prosecuted if there is intent. Usually if they suspect someone shoplifting they wait and spring the trap when there are enough clues, for example someone briskly walking to the exit.
One story: My wife got stopped in a departement store because she took an item in a sub-shop in the underground floor. It's not a mall. Then she went upstairs to look for more things to shop. The police was there after a short time. This means the shoplifting surveillance system has already sent out an alert to the police when my wife was on the stairs, because employees aren't allowed to hold people. But my wife didn't walk briskly to the exit but strolled around and when stopped she told them she wanted to pay for all things together. The police people even laughed and the employee directed my wife back downstairs to pay.
The banks often have the $2 notes, but you have to ask explicitly.
Although who knows if that's the whole reason?
Edit: digging up a citation suggests that it might be a voluntary code that banks are signed up to [1], but the regulatory regime has still swung much more in favor of the customer.
[1] https://www.citizensadvice.org.uk/debt-and-money/banking/ban...
If you watched Kitboga videos on Youtube, you know scammers often ask for gift cards as payment.
No, don't try to tell me how the secret service agent and the casino employees were victims and how this somehow ties into white privilege or some crap like that. Try spending some time off the internet and return to real life.
Probably not hugged to death, since their server is unstable for quite awhile.
Outside of one rare occurrence where I received change in golden dollars and $2 bills, the only time I've seen $2 bills was when my father would buy them to tip with.
I hate this attitude so much.
BTW the basic facts might be true but the details reek of bullshit.
Oh, look, that was so funny putting myself into a situation that most people would be scared shitless to be in and might not have ended well for them! Let's just waste everyone's time so they can humor me on a joke! I am such an edgy rich white guy! A real hacker!
What an absolute tool.
Same attitude paid off in his little Apple computer hobby.